On the Elimination of Recess

By Katherine Schultz

Seventy years ago, in The Aims of Education , Alfred North Whitehead described three phases of education: romance, precision, and generalization. Characterizing romance as a passion for inquiry and exploration that leads to more exact studies, he argued persuasively that the quest for precision is futile if it does not grow out of the romance of learning. As educators and policymakers today look for ways to improve the performance of our public education system, as measured in test scores, they are ignoring Whitehead's wisdom. In taking steps to eliminate recess (as reported on the front page of The New York Times , April 7, 1998), schools are not just reducing "play time," they are actually moving in a direction that will further diminish the quality of education and ultimately the quality of life that we offer our children.

Across the country, educators are at a loss about how to improve students' performance in school. The elimination of recess is one of a string of solutions policymakers have arrived at to give students more time in "formal" learning. According to this view, time spent outside the classroom--recess, lunch, or unstructured class time--is time "wasted." The operating theory is that more time at desks...